Houston Chronicle writer Andrew Dansby recently reviewed the new album from The Shins, Wincing The Night Away. Here’s a snippet:
Mercer doesn’t owe fans an Inverted World sequel any more than fans owe him $13 for Wincing. Like Wilco, he seems to be feeling things out in a big, new relationship. Some Shins fans could be on board for years. Others will sail close to Garden State‘s coast.
He’s trapped a few creatures — Inverted World and Chutes — and put them in the zoo and they’ve been oogled at and admired. This time he’s surrounded by smoke and beakers.
The exciting thing about laboratory albums is they often age well — see Pet Sounds, the ultimate lab album. It still lurches around the grounds drawing respect, admiration and love.
Wincing the Night Away is the sound of Mercer fulfilling his own expectations instead of others’. It’s a bold, strange, flawed and persistently intriguing album that won’t change your life. But it should provide good company for a long time.
Read the entire article here.
A pretty good summation, in my opinion. I am really enjoying Wincing The Night Away (“Split Needles” is probably my current favorite song on the album). I think it’s a real progression for the band–to be honest, I expected much less from the album and am impressed they put out something this good after all of the hype that resulted from Garden State. You should definitely check it out.
1 response so far ↓
1 Eric // Jan 30, 2007 at 10:35 am
I agree, David — the new Shins album is awesome! My love for the band has steadily grown since the release of Chutes, so I was worried that my expectations were to high. Luckily, I was not disappointed.
Check out my review of the new Shins album here: http://www.houstonist.com/archives/2007/01/25/album_review_th.php
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